IT'S A WRAP: His best movies of 2018

By Al Alexander/For the Patriot Ledger

Friday

Dec 28, 2018 at 2:50 AM

From a critic’s standpoint, 2018 has been one of the best years in decades for movies. In fact, the pantry is so full of goodies I don’t think I’ll ever digest it all. As I write this, I still haven’t seen the new Mary Poppins flick or the blockbuster “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” so there’s still more to savor. There’s also a handful of art-house flicks from earlier in the year I’ve yet to consume. But I’ve seen enough to say this is the best batch of movies I’ve dined on in one 12-month span since I started reviewing films in 1988.

It started early, too, with the fantastic “Paddington 2” proving it was ready for bear (and marmalade) way back in January. Then, just one month later, arrived perhaps the most socially important movie in recent memory. I speak, of course, of “Black Panther,” the first Hollywood blockbuster ($700 million and counting) to feature an African-American director (Ryan Coogler) and a nearly all-black cast. It emphatically proved the existence of a huge, untapped audience for such diverse movies, but more importantly, that superhero flicks can be smart, even moving.

It should tell you something about how strong this last year has been that “Black Panther” didn’t even crack my top 30, nor was it the only major achievement in African-American cinema. Spike Lee arose from the ashes of a scorched career to direct a front-line Oscar contender (and one of my favorite movies of the year), with the incendiary “BlacKkKlansman,” featuring awards-worthy performances from John David (son of Denzel) Washington and Adam Driver as real-life Colorado cops infiltrating the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Right up there with it was the surprisingly strong young-adult entry, “The Hate U Give,” a thought-provoking story about a black teen (Amandla Stenberg in a breakout turn) trying to walk the tightrope between her predominantly African-American neighborhood and the world of white privilege that is the elite prep school her parents send her to in hopes of shielding her from drugs and violence.

Boots Riley also made a statement about black identity with his funny satire, “Sorry to Bother You,” in which “Get Out’s” Lakeith Stanfield plays a down-and-out black telemarketer who stumbles into success by “sounding white” on the phone. Oh, did I mention Riley, like Coogler, is from Oakland, where his film is set? Ditto for fellow Oaklander, Daveed Diggs, who wrote and starred in the shamefully underseen “Blindspotting,” like “The Hate U Give,” about a police shooting that wasn’t clean.

Oh, and speaking of ethnic groups establishing tentpoles like “Black Panther,” the Asian community scored big with the delightful “Crazy Rich Asians,” the first of a trilogy based on Kevin Kwan’s series of best-selling novels. The film was so over the top in terms of glitz and personality, it was impossible to resist. Same for its breakout star, Constance Wu, who scored a Golden Globe nomination earlier this month for playing an American blinded by the lights of Singapore after her fiancé (the hunky and adorable Henry Golding) brings her home to meet his filthy-rich family.

Speaking of clans; if there was an overwhelming theme to this year’s bountiful crop, it was the emphasis on family. From indie giants, “The Rider” and “Leave No Trace,” to foreign entries, “Roma” and “Shoplifters,” to this year’s leading Oscar-contenders, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Black Panther” and “The Favourite,” love -- and hate -- between parents, siblings and, in the case of the latter, cousins, proved that blood isn’t always thicker than water. And in the case of “Shoplifters,” we were left to question just exactly what family is?

In some cases, like the scary-good “Eighth Grade” and the wrenching “Leave No Trace,” we saw that being a single dad trying to raise a teenage daughter can be a daunting task in these sour, desperate times. Those two films also gave us our first taste of two newcomers in teens Elsie Fisher and Thomasin McKenzie, poised to become the next Jennifer Lawrence. Heck, even Adam McKay’s ruthless takedown of Dick Cheney in his very funny “Vice,” celebrated the former vice president as an ideal husband and father. Well, at least it did until Cheney had to make his Sophie’s choice between daughters, Liz and Mary, when the former’s run for office led him to denounce support for Mary’s gay lifestyle.

Even my favorite documentary of the year, the jaw-dropping “Three Identical Strangers,” dealt with the fickleness of family. In this case, triplets who were cruelly sacrificed to the advancement of genealogy by their heartless birth parents. And can anyone name a better kids film about family than the marvelous “Paddington 2,” in which a London lineage fights tooth and nail to free their favorite bear sent up the river on a bogus theft charge? Ah, but those scenes in the big house with Paddington’s pal, Brendan Gleeson’s Knuckles McGinty, were a prison (laugh) riot.

The year also boasted one of the best action movies in recent memory with Tom Cruise repeatedly risking death in the thrilling “Mission: Impossible -- Fallout.” With every dangerous stunt, Tom rocked it like a rock star; as did Rami Malek and Bradley Cooper as pop singers with limited time to live in “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born.” Oscar nods could be in tea leaves for both. Same for Cooper’s co-star, Lady Gaga, who proved she can put on a poker face as well as any actress out there.

Then there was Ethan Hawke, who not only placed himself at the front of the Oscar race with his haunting portrayal of a minister in turmoil in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” but also directed a fine music bio of his own with “Blaze,” his gritty tale of the life and death of country music legend Blaze Foley, played by exciting newcomer Ben Dickey. And no flies on Melissa McCarthy, another Oscar hopeful for her career-best work in the fascinating literary dramedy, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?; topped only by her terrific co-star, Richard E. Grant, as the drunken, glad-handing pal to her real-life master forgeress, Lee Israel.

No film, though, moved me as deeply as Morgan Neville’s profile of children's television icon, Fred Rogers. Like he did with his Oscar-winning “20 Feet from Stardom,” Neville found a fascinating way to tell a story that could too easily have dwelled in the land of the clichéd. That it didn’t was a testament to his quality filmmaking. But again, as hard as I tried, I could not find room in my top 10 for “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.”

What did make it? Well, see for yourself below, as I list my absolute favorite films of the year, beginning with:

1. The Rider

Chloe Zhao may be China-born and raised, but her film about a young Native American rodeo rider felled by a devastating brain injury was red, white and blue through and through. Just like his character, Brady Blackburn, leading man Brady Jandreau reluctantly faced the prospect of finding a new path after falling from his bronc and having his career -- and his skull crushed by the horse’s hoof. Abetted by cinematographer Joshua James Richards, the result was riveting, as fiction and reality blurred powerfully into a dizzying treatise on not just Brady, but a wounded America, flailing away trying to redefine itself.

2. Leave No Trace

Like “The Rider,” Debra Granik’s gorgeous, shattering story about a father (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) living off the grid, dealt with the struggle of forgotten Americans trying to find their place in a country suffering from sensory overload. Beautifully written by Granik and her “Winter’s Bone” partner, Anne Rosellini, the story pulled no punches with its stirring examination of a father-daughter bond that was no match for the young girl’s thirst to be “normal” in a world her war-vet father can no longer deal with due to his disabling PTSD.

3. Shoplifters

I’m mad for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Dickensian tale of a family of thieves stealing food and hearts with their nifty five-finger discounts. But what grabs you about this Cannes-winning dramedy are its thoughtful meditations on what constitutes, and more importantly, what it means, to be a family. And this crew is like no family you’ve ever seen, as Kore-eda peels back the layers to reveal how this charming clan of five -- and their newest addition, a 5-year-old urchin from a broken home -- came to be. The truth isn’t always pretty, but the intent is pure, as Kore-eda affectingly convinces us love -- not blood -- is the basis for the best relations.

4. Burning

It’s been a few weeks since I was seduced by Lee Chang-dong’s mesmerizing thriller, and I still can’t shake its hypnotic spell. It’s a story of sex, money and class set in an unsettling South Korean landscape where unease continues to rage with the North and the nation’s millennials are lost in a never-ending search for happiness and wealth. We meet three such people: a naive farm boy, a beautiful young woman from his past and a filthy-rich “player” shrouded in mystery. Together, they form an offbeat love triangle that’s more about searching than lust, although lust has its place. The tension builds and builds, particularly when one of them goes missing and conclusions are jumped to with deadly consequences. It’s not for everyone, but I found “Burning’s” slow, steady burn to be highly combustible.

5. If Beale Street Could Talk

Barry Jenkins establishes himself as a pre-eminent director with his searing adaptation of James Baldwin’s lacerating 1974 novel about the century-old epidemic of incarcerating poor, young black men, often for crimes they didn’t commit. In this instance, an aspiring artist (Stephen James) is falsely accused of rape just as his life is coming together with an impending marriage to his childhood sweetheart (sensational newcomer Kiki Layne) and a baby on the way. The love story is the lure, but the underlying themes of unchecked racism prevail in the writer-director’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Moonlight.”

6. Roma

Childhood memories are as powerful as they are unreliable, but Alfonso Cuarón’s attempt to examine his youth through the eyes of the nanny he loved so dearly was crystal clear in its power to move and reflect on our own formative years. Cuarón may have grown up amid the political powder keg that was Mexico City in the 1970s, but his message is as universal as it is timeless. And much of the credit for that is his risky decision to build the entire movie around Yalitza Aparicio, a young woman who had never acted before, yet made it look like she’d been doing it for years with her affecting portrayal of a domestic unselfishly spreading love to a family not her own – all while her life quietly falls apart.

7. First Man

I’m still gobsmacked how Damien Chazelle’s brilliant depiction of astronaut Neil Armstrong, and his “giant leap for mankind,” failed to win over audiences. But that does nothing to distract from what I found to be a potent, technical marvel of a movie that stands as the perfect tribute to the courage and sacrifice made by spacemen and their families in the name of furthering the capabilities of humans to think and reach beyond the stars. Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of Armstrong might have been too quiet and meditative for most, but that’s who Armstrong was -- and why he became such a deeply admired American hero. You might have wanted Hollywood to turn him into a building-crushing superhero -- and many directors would have -- but Chazelle admirably resisted, seeing the beauty in a man who kept his emotions, as well as his ego, bottled up so he could focus on achieving mankind’s most awesome endeavor.

8. Vice

By far, the most polarizing movie of the year was Adam McKay’s unflinching takedown of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the alleged architect of the still controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq. If you hate Cheney, you likely loved the movie; if you like him, you hated it. So, I guess that says a lot about me, or does it? To be honest, I dislike both political parties, preferring to judge politicians by their actions, not their affiliations. Even though I’m no fan of Cheney, I have to admit I found myself admiring Christian Bale’s portrayal of him as a loving husband and father, a factor that added complexity to a movie that made it hard to square how such a man could be so cruel and Machiavellian in his governance. McKay’s film angered me, but it also made me laugh and marvel at his creativity in making the rare biopic that was fun as it was informative. I realize his brand of cynicism isn’t in vogue at a moment when our democracy is under assault, but I found “Vice” to be the perfect antidote, using political satire as a weapon of mass distraction.

9. BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee scored his biggest hit in years with the strange-but-true story of two Colorado Springs cops (John David Washington and Adam Driver) teaming in the 1970s to bring down the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, a sting that included the humiliation of the organization’s grand wizard, David Duke, slyly played by Toper Grace. The film was funny, romantic and rife with nostalgia. But it was also depressing in the fact that so little has changed in the last 50 years, a point driven home by one of the most powerful, soul-shaking postscripts I’ve seen in a long while.

10. Paddington 2

With so many serious movies in my top 10, I felt the need for some levity, and Paul King’s charming, clever journey into the fantastical provides it in the form of a talking bear from Peru whose sense of wonder and kindness is tested by a conniving huckster played hilariously by Hugh Grant. You gotta love a family film that mercilessly pokes fun at pardoned jailbird Joe Arpaio and the hate-based Brexit initiative while also turning London into an ideal habitat for an enterprising bear (fancifully voiced by Ben Whishaw) hungry for marmalade and a thirst for spreading joy. The rare film that scored a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, “Paddington 2” is much-needed proof that whimsy is far from dead.